This invention relates to clothing manufacturing and particularly to apparatus for automatically handling fabric.
Most clothing manufacturing is currently carried out using a large amount of manual labor. Prior attempts to automate clothing manufacturing have encountered difficulties with respect to handling single plies of cloth in the process of removing them from a stack of cloth having multiple plies. In one particular operation involving the manufacture of children's garments, such as striped T-shirts using knitted striped fabric, it becomes necessary to separate alternate layers of fabric plies from a stack of fabric plies. Knitted goods used in the manufacture of children's clothing are generally knitted in the form of a large diameter tube. When laid flat for cutting, this tube has two plies which have corresponding patterns, such as stripes, which run around the circumference of the knitted tube. In using such fabric tubes, a cutter cuts a pattern from a stack consisting of many plies of fabric tubes laid flat. The result is a stack of fabric plies which includes alternating layers corresponding to the fronts and backs of a garment. The general outline of the plies in the stack for the front pieces and the back pieces is identical. Since they are cut together from a tube, the front and back pieces match each other in the cloth pattern. The complete shaping of the garment, however, generally requires that the front pieces of the garment be cut at the neck to form a slightly different pattern. In order to cut the front pieces at the neck, it becomes necessary to separate alternating layers in a stack of fabric, and form two stacks corresponding to matching front and back pieces. The stacks which will form front pieces are cut again at the neck line. The corresponding fronts and backs are then combined in a sewing operation from the matching stacks so that the pattern of the knit material will match at the sides. This process of separating the front and back pieces from alternating layers of a stack of fabric plies has heretofore been done by hand, and requires considerable labor cost.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide apparatus which automatically handles single plies of cloth contained in a stack of fabric plies.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for detecting the presence of a single ply of material on a fabric transport apparatus.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide apparatus for maintaining the level of a stack of fabric plies in a material handling apparatus.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for automatically sorting alternate layers of fabric plies contained in a stack of fabric plies and form two stacks therefrom.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for continuously sorting alternate layers of fabric piles which is readily adjustable to handle piles of different widths.